


'Till the End of the Line

by Sitatu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel MCU, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Fix-It, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28095966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sitatu/pseuds/Sitatu
Summary: At the end of Avengers Endgame when Steve says goodbye before he goes to the past to replace the Infinity Stones back where (when) they belong, Bucky realizes that he's not coming back and feels hurt and betrayed...But can we leave him like this or should we give him a happy ending?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33





	1. The end

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> I am new here and might not be really good at tagging. This is the first story I'm posting here, I hope you will like it.  
> Also I am not a native English speaker, I do not live in an English speaking country and I have no beta so I am apologizing for any spelling or grammar mistake, typo or awkward phrases. Please, let me know if you see anything wrong or wierd, I would not mind improving my English writing skills ;)

“Don't do anything stupid until I get back.”  
Bucky's heart clenches inside his chest, but he doesn't let it show on his face. “How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you,” he answers and then they hug. Bucky holds on tightly, doesn't want to let go, takes one final big breath of air, committing to memory Steve's scent, aftershave, shampoo, natural musk...  
Steve hasn't told him anything but his demeanour speaks for itself. Steve's mind is set on something and not just his mission. Bucky had noticed that Steve had lost the fight in his eyes. He was weary. He guessed Steve was planning on hanging down his suit and now he understands that Steve is not coming back. He's going to abandon them and live his happy life. “I'm gonna miss you buddy,” the words go out of his throat nearly choking him.  
“It's gonna be okay Buck.”  
But it's not. Bucky's not gonna be okay without Steve. But Bucky can't be selfish. Steve deserves to be happy. Bucky doesn't, he has done too many awful things in his life to deserve Steve. He lets him go and a part of his soul dies as his best friend walks towards the platform.  
The others are talking, “How long is it going to take?”  
“For him, as long as he needs, for us, only five seconds.”  
Steve is gone, they count the five seconds down and Steve does not come back.  
Bucky fights back the tears, now is not the time. Hoping against hope, he scans the area and his eyes spot him, silver haired, sitting on a bench facing the lake. He reassures a worried Sam and sends him to his friend. He can't go there himself yet. There's a storm raging behind his seemingly composed features. He needs a little time to fight back the tears, the anger and the loneliness. He can't break down here and now. He feels shivers coursing through his body, he breathes slowly in and out until they recede, and then he focuses on Sam and Steve. Steve is handing him his shield. Sam looks uncertain and silently asks Bucky for approval.  
He gives it. He hates that shield. He doesn't want it. He wants the man who carried it. Not the hero, not the old man, he wants the little guy from Brooklyn, and another wave of grief hits him.  
Alone. He left him alone in this strange world. How could he?  
Steve and Sam are done talking, it's his turn. He doesn't want to go and see old Steve, but he feels like he has to. He swallows his resentment and his sorrow and moves forward.  
“I'm sorry,” Steve greets him. Bucky tries to answer but he has no words, besides his throat feels tied up, he doesn't think any sound could escape even if he had something to say. “I'm sorry Buck, but it's gonna be alright, I promise,” he tells him again while looking into his eyes. But he can't hold Bucky's gaze and the look of betrayal he probably wears on his face, Steve has the decency to appear to be ashamed while staring at his hands and fondling his wedding ring.  
There is a deafening silence between the two of them while Bucky is trying to get his composure back. When he does and when his throat loosens enough for him to speak, he asks, because he needs to know, he needs to know that at least it was worth it, “So, how was life?”  
Steve lifts his head and smiles fondly at him. “It was good. It was better than I had ever expected it to be,” the little shit unabashedly boasted in Bucky's face.  
Bucky's soul dies a little more and apparently he's not good at hiding it because Steve's smile turns into a look of concern and he says: “You're gonna be okay, I swear! I have to go now, there's someone waiting for me. Just go back to your room and rest for a while, you'll be all better after that. I swear.” Steve stands up, he is holding out his hand for Bucky to grab, but he does not take it. He is too hurt. How can Steve believe that he'll be alright after he discarded him like a broken toy? Bucky's being petty. He knows it. Steve deserved his happiness. Bucky does not, but the heavy silence around them is repeatedly screaming “'TILL THE END OF THE LINE!” inside his ears.  
Steve looks distraught now. “I have to go,” he repeats, “but I'll see you soon.”  
Bucky turns his back on him first and strides angrily towards his motorbike. He ignites the engine and drives to the hotel he's been staying at since he's been portaled back to New York to help defeat Thanos and his army. He opens the door to his room, steps in, slams the door shut and lets his knees give out beneath him and crumbles down to the floor, finally letting all the tears from his body pour out of him.


	2. Before a new begining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is devastated because Steve has lived his life and is an old man now, but someone is going to comfort him

“Bucky! Buck!” A familiar voice calls him as someone rushes towards him. He freezes, how could he have been so deep in his sorrow that he did not realize that his room wasn't empty?  
“It's okay Buck! It's me, I'm not dead, I'm fine!”  
Bucky looks at the man who is now crouching before him and putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder.   
It's Steve, strong, blond and young.  
“What... How... ?” He starts asking confused as hell.  
“Sorry I let you believe something went wrong with the mission,” Steve starts to apologize, scratching his head in embarrassment. “It's just that I don't want to be Captain America anymore, so I decided not to return to the platform, but here instead. If the others know that I'm back, I'll have to put the suit back on and play at being a hero again. I don't want that. I want to retire. Have a simple life, be free, take my motorbike and travel. I just want to live my life...”  
Bucky has stopped crying and his fuzzy brain is trying to make sense of the information he's getting.  
“But I just saw you! You did come back! I talked to you! You gave Sam your shield!” he exclaims.  
“I don't know who you talked to, but it wasn't me, I came back right here, I never went back to Tony's funeral and I didn't retrieve my shield, 2012 me needs it,” Steve tells him sounding confused and maybe a little worried.  
“It was you, I'm sure of it and I don't understand because I'm sure you're you too,” Bucky says staring his best friend in the eyes, there's a look of concern on his face, “I'm not crazy,” he lifts his flesh hand and touches Steve's face with the tips of his fingers. “You were old, gray and wrinkled, but it was you.”  
Steve lifts his eyebrows, “Then it must be me from the future travelling back to my past,” he deduces. “Actually it makes sense and it's pretty smart. If my older self comes back instead of me, no one is going to look for me, and they'll know the mission went well... I'm so smart!” Steve smiles an idiotic grin.  
“You're not, you didn't come up with the idea, until I told you, you had no clue that an older version of you came back instead of you,” Bucky points out.  
“Well it's a bit like the eternal question of what came first, the egg or the chicken? I guess we'll never know where the idea came from now,” Steve muses. “Anyway,” he says while moving from his crouching position to sitting on the floor, really, really close to Bucky, a puzzled look on his face, he asks, “If you knew I wasn't dead, why were you crying when you came back?”  
“You were alive, but so old, I thought you had lived your life without me, I thought that you had abandoned me...” Bucky says, voice raspy with his previous crying. He remembers the feeling of loss and his eyes start stinging again at the memory.  
“Never,” Steve whispers. “'Till the end of the line, pal, I meant it...” and the hand on his shoulder squeezes him comfortingly.  
Then there is a silence in which Bucky realizes he might have said too much and he does not know how to answer Steve's comment, because, surely, he does not mean it the way Bucky wants to hear it...  
“So,” Steve broke the silence, “you spoke with old me... I'm curious, what did you two talk about?”  
“Not much,” Bucky confesses, “he apologized a lot, and told me I would be alright...”  
“That's it?” Steve sounds surprized and a little disappointed.  
“I asked how your life was, and you only answered that it was good. Actually you were fondling a wedding ring and boasted that your life had been better than you had ever expected it to be. Apart from that and apologizing you just said that you had to go, that someone was waiting for you...”  
“Better than I ever expected? That's interesting,” Steve comments and a silly grin comes back to his face and he inches a little closer to Bucky whose super soldier serum improved nose catches something.  
“You smell like Peggy's perfume,” he accuses.  
Steve retreats a little, a startled expression on his face, “You remember her perfume?”  
“I do,” he just confirms, but does not tell him that he only paid attention to it because she was his rival and he had learned to know his enemies if he ever hoped to defeat them.  
“She spotted me in 1970,” he explains, “I had to convince her that it was really me and then had to make good on a promise I made her in 1943 before I crashed the plane in the Atlantic and we shared a dance. Then I came back here, to you.”  
Bucky hears the words but doesn't want to put meaning behind them. Dosen't want to hope. Doesn't want to be dissapointed. He doesn't want to, but those sneaky two words “to you” won't leave his head.  
After what seems to be an eternity but must have been only a couple of minutes, Bucky has to hush those words echoing in his brain so he asks: “What's your plan now? Take your bike and leave on a road trip?”  
“Something along those lines yes,” Steve inches closer again. “Would you like to elope with me?” he asks him mischievously.  
“Elope?” Bucky repeats dumbly, because Steve is not dissipating his misinterpretation of his previous words but adds to it instead.  
Steve offers him an awkward smile and scratches his head, “It's a queer choice of words, I know...”  
“It is!” Bucky scolds him sharply, because it seems like his best friend is playing with his feelings and it scares him. “Why did you come back here Steve? And no weird innuendo please.”  
“Okay then,” Steve steels himself, “I'll have faith in what old me said to you, that my life would be better than expected, and just come out to you... I'm trying to hint, not too subtly by the way, that I could be interested in a romantic relationship with my best friend and I'm kinda asking if you could be too Bucky...  
Bucky just gapes open mouthed at him.  
When several seconds pass and he still hasn't moved or said anything, Steve starts to get up and nervously adds, “Or I've read too much into it and you should just forget I said anything at all...”  
Bucky grabs his arm and pulls Steve towards him and he lands in his lap, his surprised face a breath away from Bucky's. He stares him in the eyes, trying to detect any sign that Steve is making fun of him somehow. “You'd want a romantic relationship with a semi stable one hundred year old man?” he asks.   
The only thing he sees in the deep blue pools that are his eyes is sincerity and … desire... “There's no one else I'd rather be with, no matter the kind of relationship we're in, as long as we're the two of us,” Steve whispers back coyly.  
Bucky's heart is hammering so hard in his chest that he fears that it'll explode and rip his ribcage appart. Can this really be real? His breathing is accelerating and so is Steve's, he can feel the warm air coming out of his best friend's lungs because Bucky is moving his face towards Steves, his lips suddenly attracted to the little punk's like a magnet until they finally touch.  
As dry lips meet dry lips, time stops and Bucky's heart seems to stop beating altogether. He'd dreamt about this moment for most of his life, and if he does die now, it will be a happy death... But he does not and time ticks again, his lungs fill with air again and his heart beats again. A warm hand gently lands on his neck, pulling him closer to those, how so soft, lips and he starts kissing them in earnest while his flesh hand mirrors Steve's and comes to rest on his neck, letting his fingers caress the soft hair at the base of his skull.   
They worship each other's lips for a while until Bucky's tongue darts out of his mouth to softly lick Steve's lower lip. In response he opens his mouth and lets his own tongue out to meet Bucky's and the kiss turns more greedy, more demanding, charged with years of repressed feeling and deep passion. Somehow, they end up lying down on the hotel room's carpeted floor holding onto each other for dear life. It feels exhilarating, thrilling, fulfilling.  
Short of breath, Bucky retreats a little and takes a second to look at Steve's face. With his lustful gaze and lips red from kissing he looks debauched and more enticing than ever before. He's never seen Steve looking like that with anyone, not Peggy, not Sharon, not anyone else... That look is for him only. His heart warms beneath Steve's gaze and all the cracks of imagined unrequited loved starts to melt away. He feels more whole than ever before, he feels more whole than when he had two flesh arms...  
“'Till the end of the line,” he whispers and goes back to kissing his best friend and only love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've enjoyed this story.  
> I have been really sad for Bucky after watching Avengers Endgame when I saw it and since then I've been thinking of stories in which he ends up with Steve. This is only one of the 4 different fix it fic that have poped into my brain, it is short but that's why I've been able to publish it (the other three are longer and I've no idea if I'll ever manage to finish them)  
> Please do not hesitate to tell me if you see any mistakes (spelling, grammar, typo, sentences that make no sense...)  
> Thank you for reading :)


End file.
